“This book, to me, seems timeless and utterly present in its desire, through the hard work of formal rigor and dreaming, to look deeply at the damaged and often beautiful world as a means of making something new.”

“In Daniel Lassell’s Spit, we see the leaning faces of barns disappear. There is a relationship between what is sacred and what is empty, between homesickness and the guilt of thinking of any place as one’s own. What I love about this collection is its ability to convey both an adoration of landscape and the violence inherent to the pastoral: ‘beads of yolk dapple the soil.’”

“Rife with biblical references, Daniel Lassell’s poems suggest that the animal kingdom is distinct, regardless of our claims of preservation, and cannot be governed by humans who lack the capacity to first understand ourselves. The devastation of this collection is in being deftly led through the experiences within its microcosm, only to question the whole of existence. In image after taut image, the terror and magic of life are all.”

“In this captivating and inventive debut, there’s good humor and plenty of sorrow, a story of recovery and growth, of finding community and healing in a place far away. Daniel Lassell writes beautiful poems with tenderness and care, even when he tells hard truths.”

“These poems teach me again that our membership in the practiced knowledge of life and death is equal to its burden of daily chores, the specific transactions of love we choose or don’t, the countless ways we can still return to our places and ourselves. Spit is at once a coming-of-age story and an elegy for that so-called coming-of-age, a necessary guidebook for anyone hoping to go home again.”

“Daniel Lassell’s arresting and visceral debut smolders with heartache, gritty natural landscapes, and an insistent lyrical beauty that both celebrates and haunts the edges of our familiar world. It is the story of a boy and young man who grows up amid vast yet confining farmlands, llamas, power plants, sunset-blazed wheat, and a family he both cherishes and knows he must flee. And the lessons are hard-learned, whittled into bark like initials separated by a heart. These poems illuminate the complexity, curiosity, and rawness of life in an often-neglected part of America. Spit is a starkly rendered cultural exploration, personal journey, and love letter to the familiarity and the strangeness that compose a ‘home.’”

“An insightful narrator and a cast of characters explore capitalism’s questionable side. From commentaries on the exploitation of the individual and their talents to the inundation of ads that drive greed, materialism, and mass consumption, Lassell highlights the existential darkness inherent within society. At times, dark humor borders on being satirical yet unabashedly communicates the harsh truth when the dollar matters more than humanity. Dystopian, thought-provoking, and engaging, these poems linger.”